Renewal

A few weeks ago, I had a craving for salmon teriyaki, a meal I occassionally enjoyed buying from a restaurant around my job. I didn't give into this craving but for a few moments throughout the day, I thought, "Hmmm, salmon sounds really good right now." I knew I wasn't going to eat it but I kept thinking about it.

Since then, every once in a while, the thought pops into my head, "I wonder if I'll ever eat meat again," or "Cheese. It does taste good." I don't do anything with the thoughts. I just notice them. They go away. I'm vegan now and, unless I'm at a nonvegan restaurant (like I think I may have to go to tomorrow for work and the damn place doesn't even have a web listing on a search engine, let alone a web site for me to peruse), I do not find it in the least bit difficult to be vegan. Still, 27-plus years of eating animals and their by-products can still be slightly formidable in the face of just months of vegetarianism and veganism.

In the last week or so, I've been obsessively listening to the Hip Tranquil Chick podcast and loving it. Totally getting my yoga on, journaling, really focusing on me, so much so that I did yoga poses while Brian painted inside my mother's house (I did help, too; I just took some yoga breaks!). This is in contrast to what I've been focusing on in the past year, which has mainly been Brian and veganism. At work, I usually listened to Food for Thought, Vegan Freak Radio, Animal Voices, and others. I spent a majority of my waking hours thinking about animals and food. I'm not saying getting into yoga and other subjects is making me want to eat salmon. Yoga has that whole ahimsa thing going for it, so delving into yoga only strengthens my commitment to veganism. What I am saying is, I took a little break from Hip Tranquil Chick today and listened to the latest Vegan Freak and Food for Thought episodes. I saw the picture in the upper left hand corner of this post with the shownotes for the latest Animal Voices episode on Farm Sanctuary's pig rescue and almost started crying. I knew the answer to the question, "I wonder if I'll ever eat meat again?" No. I won't eat animals again. Not as long as my eyes, ears, head, and heart are open. Since veganism is still new to me and still something I don't automatically share with people, I still need to do work to reinforce my dedication to and practice of it.

Random Fridays: Guess Who Is Going to School?

Congratulations, Brian, on your admittance into Drexel University’s College of Information Science and Technology! Please allow me to disagree with your modest claims that this is really no big deal. Yes, it is! Not everyone is admitted into graduate school and not everyone takes the time and effort to go through the various steps of choosing and applying to a program while working full-time, taking care of a house, and doing the whole long-distance relationship dance with their girlfriends, not to mention eating, sleeping, and showering. I know you will succeed in school, make lots of genuine connections (‘cause that’s just what you do), and go on to be a top-notch archivist. You will probably invent a new, cutting-edge archiving system that will blow Mr. Dewey out of the water. Have fun and I love you.

(Picture is of the Library of Congress, Washington DC, where the Storycorps Brian and I recorded in Grand Central Terminal last year is archived. Maybe he'll be able to find it there after he's done with school.)

Everyone Is a Little Vegan

My friend just came back from Canyon Ranch and was going on about how lovely it was, how good the food was, how restorative restorative yoga was. Just listening to her made me want to go so I checked out the web site and looked over the menu. They clearly label vegan items, like miso soup and smoothies, which is really great. However, I noticed that some clearly vegan items did not garner a vegan sign next to it. Apparently, bananas, berries, melons, rice, and potatoes are not vegan.

When many people think of vegan food, they often think of tofu or fake meat strips. They are vegan and I happen to like both. We often forget that the fruits, vegetables, grains, beans, and nuts we are eating are vegan too. It’s strange that the completely unadulterated foods—almost all of which are vegan—don’t get labeled as such. Why are they not immediately deemed vegan by your average meateater, then? When Brian and I bring fruit salad to a lunch, it doesn’t get labeled vegan so everyone gobbles it right up. When we bring out the cake that doesn’t contain eggs and butter, though, trepidation often kicks in because it’s V-E-G-A-N. But it’s no more vegan than the fruit.

What makes a diet without meat and other animal products seem daunting is the idea that we will have to eat food that isn’t “real”, is too different, isn’t good enough. I certainly used to think that way and still have some of that thinking to a degree (hello, cheese). Thing is, I always ate vegan food even when I was an omnivore. The banana in my cereal, the beans on my rice, the salad for lunch—all vegan. We’re all eating vegan food all the time. Thinking that it’s an entirely foreign diet is inaccurate and makes something already familiar and available in abundance seem unnecessarily weird and lacking.

Mutual Menu is giving away one copy of Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero. To enter to win and for more details, please leave one comment here.

The Nature of the Beast

One of my favorite sayings as a vegan and angsty quasi-pacifist living in a city with an intolerably high murder rate is Kill two humans with one bullet. It's my cynical little spin on the equally deranged Kill two birds with one stone. I've been noticing lately just how many of these types of cliches have influenced my adult vernacular, especially as they relate to the most basic of human and planetary ethics and traits. There are the diet-influenced sayings like You are what you eat and An apple a day keeps the doctor away. Then there are all those that try to capture the singular characteristics of our animal kingdom. Here are a few examples: It's the nature of the beast; Birds of a feather flock together; Don't put the cart before the horse; Don't count your eggs before they're hatched; Don't put all your eggs in one basket; or, my favorite, Happy as a clam (which---up until recently---I always thought was Happy as a clown, since clowns seem like much more jubilant folk than clams).

Like most couples, friends, neighbors, family members, or colleagues who share a good portion of their lives together, Joselle and I frequently adopt each other's sayings and thoughts. Some are cliche; some are just plain malicious; and others are suprisingly profound. I've taken to Joselle's This is a slow boat to China when I think about how far off a non-exploitative, animal-friendly world really seems---despite our modern, sophisticated, semantics-obssessed society. Joselle has also commented several times as to how everyone (including the carnivore) is a vegetarian in some capacity, whereas vegetarians will not and cannot be omnivores; something that's always struck me as insightful and poignant. Pretty much everyone eats vegetables, regardless of where people are from or what the hell they believe. Folks like their legumes (Beans, beans are good for the heart). They relish their fruit and pastas and breads and all sorts of treats, which can surely still be savory without all the animal ingredients that industries try to throw at us. If that's truly the case, why do so many omnivores get turned off by the word "vegetarian"?

Maybe it's the nature of the human beast to always want to be in control of everything. After all, A dog is [human]'s best friend---not the other way around. I mean, even the language of these cliches implies the domination of humans over the rest of the animal kingdom. Even more, there are the suggestions of our need for control in the lifestyle choices that every single one of us makes about who, what, when, where, and why we eat what we eat. Vegans choose not to consume animal flesh or byproducts out of respect for the lives of other animal species, as well as in an effort to make a statement of sociopolitical oppostition to an industry that will bleed us all dry for the right price. Contrastingly, Joselle and I can't really seem to grill-wrap our heads around why so many omnivores cringe at the thought of plant-based ingredients for vegetarian dishes; at the thought of stepping foot in a vegetarian restaurant that represents healthy living and, hopefully, environmental consciousness; at the thought of eating a Heart Thrive instead of a Snickers bar from the vending machine. Why is this? Maybe it's the nature of the beast to be selective, opinionated, obstinate, and apprehensive for no clear reason.

In order for a truly effective mutual menu to work, it seems to me that everyone involved needs to have a full understanding---not just a superficial tolerance---of why we all make the decisions that we make. Whether we do something for ethics, for self-preservation (i.e., oftentimes protecting our own individual health, rather than selflessly focusing on the health of our greater environment), or for the sheer fact that we don't really care about anything accept what feels good to us, we as humans have the special gift of verbal language; a tool set that should theoretically allow us to carefully communicate our commonalities and differences with one another. That would be the first step. Beyond that, it'd be nice if we could learn to utilize an intelligence of the "superior species" to figure out how we can all just get along.

If we don't learn to compromise, then I guess birds of a feather will continue to flock together---at least until there are no more birds to stone. In fact, if we could just be a smidgeon more thoughtful about the decisions we make, maybe humans wouldn't seem so stoned themselves.